GIDEON Testimonials

“GIDEON is a very useful source, especially in generating differential diagnoses on difficult to identify infectious disease patients with travel history. I use it also to clarify unusual disease patterns and understand disease presentations. GIDEON is a great and handy resource on the web.” D. Scott Smith, MD, MSc., DTM&H, Chief of Infectious Disease & Geographic Medicine, Kaiser Redwood City, CA and Adj Asst. Professor, Stanford University Medical School

“I logged on to the GideonOnline site…way beyond fantastic. I just became chair of the Pathophysiology Dept. at VCOM and this site will change the way we teach our course and will change the way the students will study and learn. I love the site…totally user friendly, comprehensive and so international.” James R. Palmieri, PhD, Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine“Thanks for your prompt replies and incredibly kind help in the development of Mississippi’s public health surveillance project. We are up and running. It’s very exciting. The toll free number is: 1-888-819-SWAB (give it a try). All 90 state shelters will be networked, in addition to other community clinics and some hospitals. This means that we expect to have our finger on the pulse of any potential contagious illness emerging in the evacuee population. On day 1 of implementation, we received a call reporting a case of possible chickenpox. We helped arrange a formal evaluation, and two more cases were diagnosed on the subsequent day. Existence of the hotline meant that we (the Mississippi Dept of Health and the American Red Cross) were on top of the situation from the moment it began. With your help, the GIDEON clinical summaries are being by hotline managers to help recognize disease syndromes.” Dr. Jonathan Spector, Harvard“We often seem to get the difficult patients, including people and children who have never had any vaccines and still want to go to infectious Third World countries. It is so helpful to give them figures of vaccine preventable diseases the last year on record as well as the other situations, such as leishmaniasis, etc. The graph is good in that it is easy to see at a glance if figures are declining or growing and we always let a patient see at last one graph appropriate for their situation. But the exact figures really hit home with them.

GIDEON is so helpful and if I only had the money to buy one travel health program, I would throw out the others and keep yours.

As I am preparing and researching a country’s infectious disease situation for a client, sometimes I am on GIDEON for a while, going through each disease one by one. It is really helpful! And then Dr Carroll really relies on your input for the post-travel patients we see as well. We are the only ones who see these patients in a radius of a hundred miles at least. We give the credit to GIDEON but it sure makes us look good! :-)” Joyce from the Travel Doctor, Grandville, MI

“As we work in 61 countries, the extensive Epidemiology section has been most helpful to those of us who deal with diverse and sometimes obscure medical problems. At Direct Relief International, we have been searching for a vehicle that will aid health care workers around the world with diagnosis and treatment, and GIDEON has been most helpful.” William Morton-Smith, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Direct Relief International“It’s a wonderful product…” Dr. Arthur S. Dover“A user-friendly, accurate and continually updated medical and microbiological resource, not only for for clinicians, but anyone wishing to know about global disease endemicity and treatment. A must for anyone who has anything to do with infectious diseases.” John S Marr, MD, Virginia Department of Health“Medical library patrons should have ready access to GIDEON, especially for the bioterrorism simulator feature. In a crunch, it could be a lifesaver. … Moreover, it is an excellent example of artificial intelligence, also useful for education. The bioterrorism simulator is a strong reason to have GIDEON available in all medical centers and available to their users from their offices or via wireless from their laptop computers. Not many people have seen the signs and symptoms diseases due to probable bioterrorism agents. GIDEON should also be available to EMS people and local health departments, who could be among the first to use it if there ever is a bioterrorism event.” Cedric Garland, M.D., UCSD“With today’s computer literate students, I was looking in the internet for a supplement to Bergey’s Manual of bacteriology, when I came across GIDEON … I currently use GIDEON in two classes, microbiology and a follow-up seminar on emerging infectious disease.” George Bazinet, Professor, Siena College“GIDEON is an excellent teaching tool for medical students, residents, fellows, nurses, and others interested in enhancing their knowledge base and diagnostic skills in travel and tropical medicine. It is also useful to busy clinicians with high volume travel/tropical medicine practices as a diagnostic tool for complex problems.” Robert E. Dedmon, MD MPH FACP FACOEM, Retired VP Medical Affairs, Kimberly-Clark“It is really amazing, excellent job!!” Dr. Mathias Pletz, Emory University“Just had a chance to look at the images – Awesome!! I’ll have to get the word out in my next newsletter! Thanks so much for the update; this is an incredible resource!” Sally Bremner, Health Science Librarian, University of Alaska“Increasing numbers of medical school faculty are now working in sub-Saharan Africa through President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Because few of us have experience in tropical medicine, there is a need to ready access to resources in tropical medicine for diagnostic and treatment purposes. Last year I became acquainted with GIDEON online and have found it very helpful.” Wm. Christopher Mathews, M.D., MSPH, Director, Owen Clinic, Professor of Clinical Medicine, UCSD Medical Center“It is impressive” M.D., Vanderbilt University“As a biomedical informatician with an interest in the study of infectious diseases, the GIDEON interface provides an easy-to-use and clearly organized access to knowledge that, in many ways, would not be available in any other manner without significant investment of time and funding. GIDEON essentially pays for itself as a resource for any scientist studying infectious disease.” Indra Neil Sarkar, PhD Bioinformatics Associate, American Museum of Natural History“As useful as GIDEON is for developing a comprehensive differential diagnosis list for patients with presumed infectious diseases, I have found the microbiology module most valuable for guiding laboratory workers in the identification of unusual and atypical culture isolates. The constantly updated list of microorganism taxonomic name changes is also extremely helpful.” Joseph M. Campos, PhD, DABMM Director, Microbiology Laboratory and Laboratory Informatics and Professor, Departments of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Microbiology/Tropical Medicine “[GIDEON] was very helpful for a project I had to do – identifying an unknown bacterium! It is great, I love it!” Amanda Zomp, Student, Campbell University“The microbiology module is user friendly and gives a very useful guide in order of importance discriminatory tests in the identification of microorganisms. GIDEON will no doubt find a very good use in resource-limited settings like Nigeria.” Dr. Oladiipo Aboderin, Obafemi Awolowo Univesity, Ile-Ife, Nigeria“GIDEON is truly incredible and the students, TAs and I love using it. We are very happy to renew the institutional subscription each year … Could not run my microbiology lab without using GIDEON.” Monika Oli, Department of Microbiology and Cell Science, University of Florida